


Apotheosis

by ticoyuu



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Septentrione Arc, Whump, no beta we die like (insert ur desu2 fav here), with any kill polaris!ending except alcor's
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:00:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23480593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ticoyuu/pseuds/ticoyuu
Summary: Apotheosis • the elevation of someone to divine status; deification.The Akasha Stratum and Administrator system are actually fucking terrible.(aka: the septentrione gijinka/dark heavenly throne headcanons ft gratuitous polaris×alcor fic nobody asked for!)
Relationships: Alcor (Devil Survivor 2)/Polaris (Devil Survivor 2)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	Apotheosis

**Author's Note:**

> fair warning, this is like 99% headcanons. theres canon inspo for the septentriones, but at this point its p much oc party.. theyre not really significant tho, plot device moreso than charas.
> 
> except for my fave self replicating tentacle beastie mizar. i play favorites dnfjfjsj// dont @ me (no, please do djdbf)
> 
> theres nothing really.. disturbing? here that should warrant "choose not to warn", but just to be on the safe side bc violence, death, etc, also my brain is fried😅

_“…!!"_

He can't avoid this one. His tendrils are overextended; he can't bring them back quickly enough to block the tremendous bolt of magic flying true towards his core.

The wires writhe and whistle through the air, trying to protect their master- their main body- but the crackling magic twists and spirals, dodging the edges and dancing ever closer through the gaps in his defenses.

  
  


_Whoever is performing this spell is truly masterful._

Alcor's first conscious reaction is surprise- taken aback; quite impressed. He isn't given the time for further thoughts.

Blue-black sparks ignite the air around him as pure, searing _energy_ pierces deep through his core. If he was still human; if he was still he might've said, _Ah, this pain pierces my heart._

\--Maybe it would also be appropriate to call it _heartbreak_.

  
  


Right now, Alcor has neither human body nor soul. Perhaps in the days leading up to this, he'd had other options; countless opportunities to branch off from the correct path. ...But it's fruitless to consider now; he has already given up _Al Saiduq._

  
  


The energy in his core sparks around him like fireworks, finally breaking free in a chain of tiny explosions. _Supernova,_ he thinks he can hear someone muttering.

His body drops to the floor, spent and defenseless. Even he can see the irony of how that all that's left of him is a shell.

  
  


_“Did we do it!?”_

_“He stopped moving!”_

_“...Ah!!”_

  
  


Unable to hold his true form together, the last remainder of Alcor's magic desperately coalesces into a more compact, familiar form. This body is soft; the damage it sustains as he crashes to the shining Terminal's floor is much greater than if he'd kept his core.

At least like this, he can communicate more easily.

  
  


For a moment, lying on the floor with barely the strength to twitch his fingers, Alcor ponders when exactly, he started becoming weak.

Humans would say just before death, one's life flashes before their eyes. How many lives has Alcor lived? Thousands of years; none of it lived. In this... short, very short time, he's grown curious. Complacent, likely; and obsessively... _invested_ in a way that's very like humanity.

  
  


A few more days will pass, and soon, perhaps the Administrator will have this very same experience. Like all things in that vein, Alcor will have gone first; marked out the path to take.

...He's a little surprised to find himself not only entertaining the possibility of Polaris' death at human hands, but hoping; speculating.

  
  


Alcor concludes his reflection in the span of seconds- he has not grown weak. No, it's... just, mankind has become so, so strong.

  
  


The path of history had brought him to many special individuals through the ages; singularities who changed human history even within the constraints of the 30, 40... 60-? a number that's since grown to 80-odd years allotted to humans, on average. That the number has changed throughout time- it- it is curious, he admits. But it is growth. Humanity continues to evolve, with or without his assistance. 

  
  


Fragile; ephemeral. Limited individually, yet capable of amazing feats as a whole. To an unchanging Star like himself, it is an... odd, thing.

  
  


Alcor himself hadn’t expected that he’d ever be considered a human's ‘friend’- he, who sometimes walked among them for a time, however brief; he, the traitorous morningstar who would mourn when the time came to snuff out their lights. 

And yet, it's undeniable that Hibiki Kuze's ability to draw out and link human potential far surpasses anyone he'd previously called _Shining One_.

This Shining One- no, _Hibiki Kuze_ , is a whole cluster of surprises.

  
  


He is only human. But perhaps that small, insignificant thing will be the key that succeeds in felling the Administrator.

  
  


☆

_"ALCOR!_ ” 

"Mizar." he returns placidly.

The Star currently shaking him by the shoulders is in a state of... panic, Alcor thinks, brows furrowing. 

Of their number, Mizar is the most fond of humans- and probably not coincidentally, he's also the most humanlike in mannerism.

Sometimes it's interesting; other times entertaining. An annoyance when it obscures the meaning of his communication in pointless pleasantry. Unfortunately, trying to dissuade him has proven to be an exercise in futility. 

  
  


“What are you doing? Can't keep Kawkab waiting, you know. You should also know, _someone_ else up there is waiting very impatiently. You shouldn't keep _him_ waiting even more."

"...This, ah, mutual interest, as you put it. It is common knowledge..?"

  
  


Mizar is perceptive. Annoyingly so. Alcor- no more than honestly, simply curious- is given a long, appraising stare.

  
  


"Mm, probably just to me." 

  
  


Alcor stares.

Mizar shrugs.

_Ugh_ , humans. What a terribly bad influence.

  
  


"You can just say 'love', you know?"

"I cannot find reason to use such language?"

"Okay, okay, you _don't_ like him and he's _not_ up there on the verge of going supernova with barely contained anxiety."

Alcor tilts his head. That wasn't what he meant, but...

Blank silver eyes meet lively violet before Mizar turns to leave, similarly-colored hair swishing as he does. And then he's gone in a little ripple of cosmic dust.

  
  


Mizar's investment in humans is... a little dangerous in its depth, Alcor thinks. He has forgotten how to speak plainly; he is all sorts of colors and textures that stars shouldn't be; he is infecting Dubhe with this... _obsession_ in turn. 

Stars like them, while connected- and living, in a sense- are generally not conscious beings. In the way all Stars understand their commonality, Alcor has access to the knowledge every conscious Star has learned over time, and some from Stars not yet born.

So he can say this with confidence- Mizar is _weird._

Stars don't even naturally gain consciousness or a soft body akin to a human's; Mizar's purple hues and the way he fashions hair are unique on an extra level.

They're here for one purpose- the Succession Gauntlet that determines the Star worthy to inherit the Administrator's throne.

  
  


Well, it's not a bad thing to enjoy oneself, Alcor supposes. After all, they'll all return to their unthinking states little more than primal masses of energy once it's over.

In any case, Mizar is right.

  
  


He should stop this hiding business and go, yes. Fear; ... _feelings_ are very human concepts that Stars have no need nor room for.

  
  


He's not really sure how or why he ended up back in his old cradle; the patch of universe where his celestial body once resided.

He's even less understanding of why returning to this coordinate seems to calm him.

☆

Alcor closes his eyes and summons his memory of the Akasha Stratum. When he reopens them, the floor is pearlescent and smooth, and eight pairs of eyes are on him.

Dubhe, Merak, Phecda, Megrez; Alioth, Mizar, Benetnasch... Polaris.

For his own sake, Alcor consciously decides not to acknowledge Dubhe's freshly rainbow coloring or the way it seems to have also bled onto Megrez.

  
  


_Actually... no,_ Alcor revises his prior judgment. The gauntlet is nearing its end and Dubhe, as a new Star, is much like humanity's immature young. Stars typically do not even have lives, let alone life stages, but... it's not such a bad thing to indulge children.

...Though it's not like anything about the Gauntlet even approaches the _typical_ all Stars innately know.

  
  


"The, ah, edits you've made," he surprises himself by saying, "are... fascinating. Dubhe."

  
  


When Dubhe's small form beams at him, Alcor smiles back for reasons he doesn't completely understand. The unified Star unconscious' influence over them all, he supposes.

  
  


Kawkab chooses that moment to make its presence known. Alcor saw it upon arriving- as an entity technically joined with, and as large as the Stratum itself, Kawkab is impossible to miss. The Stratum's massive central pillar opens a pair of enormous eyes that proceed to sweep impassively over Alcor and his kin.

The new Administrator is the only Star that retains its conscious sense of self after the Gauntlet. Even so, Kawkab seems to have no personality whatsoever. ...Perhaps it's just because it's old and has spent centuries conscious with nothing but its own thoughts. Alcor has been 'alive' for nowhere near that long, but he thinks if that is indeed the case, he will not be holding it against Kawkab.

  
  


"Old bastard," he hears Alioth's deep voice somewhere behind him, "choose, and let us be done with this play, already."

  
  


Alioth has never had interest in humans, Alcor remembers fondly. Having never gone to see for himself, the bigger Star knows as much as Mizar provides; while quantitative, it is... difficult to call his reporting qualitative.

Another Star chokes back a laugh, and Alcor knows it belongs to Mizar. 

  
  


There's something almost humorous- poetic, ironic; tragic?- about the way they all seem to be gaining more individuality than ever before on what will be their last day.

  
  


"It is time." Kawkab announces, its voice ringing in the air; rumbling through the platform beneath their feet.

  
  


And then it just... stops, abruptly so. Everything does, and the sudden emptiness is replaced by a different sort of wordless gravitas.

  
  


"Well, like Alioth said, Kawkab _is_ an ancient fossil of a Star... ha ha..."

  
  


Megrez.

The joke is terrible, but Alcor can't laugh because he feels even more terrible that all of them- their individuality to the degree of thinking in plural; that they even think at all- all of this _self_ will return to nothing only after having come this far.

Stars do not fear death, nor do they even comprehend it the way humans do. To 'die' is to cease to exist; slowly dimming and declining into obscurity for most, or rarely going supernova and returning nearby Stars alongside. 'Death' is the natural, inevitable return to stardust; 'birth' is the formation of a new Star from countless old components.

  
  


Waiting to be returned to their unified unconscious, Alcor is abruptly hit by the realization that human death is something he _does_ understand, intimately so.

  
  


Moments tick by in uneasy silence, and then-

  
  


"Damn it," he hears over his shoulder, which Polaris' chin comes to rest on right after.

The Pole Star has always had tremendous individuality. Alcor and the others revolved around it in their early days of being thrust into conscious, thinking beings; Alcor alone continued to revolve around him long after.

  
  


"...I don't have time to care." 

"Eh-?"

  
  


Polaris sweeps him around so they're face to face, and the next thing Alcor knows their faces are close; so close. Soft lips and sharp teeth aggressively attack his mouth, and Alcor's pale skin flushes a very human red- a physiological response, in these bodies based on humans- and only distantly registers Mizar's comment of "Oh, how adult."

  
  


Polaris mercifully withdraws after what might've been another eternity, or just ten seconds; Alcor's lost the ability to tell at the moment. 

"Whatever happens," he breathes, the words escaping his lips to fall right onto Alcor's, "love. How humans mean it. It... it is my strongest feeling."

  
  


When he recovers from the split-second processes overload, Alcor doesn't say anything, only pulls him down for another desperate, starving kiss. A human form provides a deluge of feelings and reactions of all sorts; Alcor elects to ignore them all. The feelings are human, but he and Polaris are not, and there isn't time to try and understand anything more than this.

  
  


It's a horrid cracking, like that of a collapsing Star just before it goes supernova, that jolts them both out of their reverie. Dubhe's small frame collapses onto Megrez's arm, and the weak sound they all- even Alioth- recognize as a cough. Sanguine blood spatters on Megrez and the Stratum's shining, perfect floor with a second wet shudder and a repeat of that terrifying noise.

  
  


"Time's up," Alioth says grimly.

  
  


Then Dubhe is gone, and the small body dissipates before their eyes. Even the little pools of blood on the floor and spattered on Megrez dry up and leave behind only dust that isn't made of stars.

Before Dubhe's remains have even finished fading, the sound of breaking splits the air again, and Merak drops to one knee. The hand bracing himself on the ground trembles before shattering altogether. Phecda instinctively reaches out for the Star he called _brother_ with a cry, but only succeeds in catching the fragments of a frozen, still perfect shape as it crashes to the ground.

  
  


The fragments are sharp, and Phecda's hands bleed even as they crumble and slip away as dust in a black wind. Helplessly, they watch as Phecda's body jolts awkwardly, a scream tearing from his mouth as he claws at his throat. When he pitches forward onto Merak's fading remains, his body has already begun to break apart, and shards of it fall onto the other's dust with a sick, wet sound. Their dust begins to dissipate, and together, they are borne away to nothingness in the same invisible current.

  
  


Someone sobs in a whisper that's barely audible, yet somehow deafening, _"I don't want to die..!"_

  
  


Alcor can't tell which of the Stars the voice belongs to.

  
  


Polaris grabs him by the shoulders and holds him close, completely shutting out everything outside the perimeter of his embrace and grits out, "I _WILL NOT_.. let it happen!"

Alcor desperately wants to believe. But too quickly, the Stratum is empty save Polaris and himself. 

  
  


_Why are they thrust into the Gauntlet and forced to take human form?_ He would demand, but the universe itself cannot answer. There's no thoughts in his head, only wordless, overwhelming _feeling_ as his body breaks apart in a series of miniature supernovas.

Polaris' arms tightening around him as he breaks apart in sparks and flame is the last and only thing Alcor's human body registers.

  
  


In the brief interim between his human form breaking and fading from consciousness entirely, he's strangely clear-minded and can finally put a name to one singular emotion; it hurts _it hurts_ ** _it HURTS_** ...and yet, even with the weight of all his anguish, Alcor can't feel a thing.

  
  


☆ 

Thousands of years later, Alcor drifts in and out of consciousness, vaguely aware of himself unlocking the final barrier between his hopes for the future and his love from the past; recalls the moment of his first death and juxtaposing it with the here and now. 

  
  


There was no single moment in his impossibly long, immeasurable lifespan more fitting than the Administrator's ascension to mark the beginning of his anguish. 

It's an odd thing to be taken with on one's dying day, but Alcor's wandering thoughts start down a path from eons past; Stars do not have lives to begin with, so Stars do not fear death. 

Death, for a Star, is just the beginning stage of rebirth. To fuse with the insignificant fragments of others and form something new... perhaps something greater. Perhaps not.

Alcor knows, with unwavering certainty, that Polaris will return to him soon.

☆

_"Thank you, Al Saiduq."_

Alcor does not hear.

**Author's Note:**

> this has been rattling around in my otherwise empty head like the windows 98 screensaver since like 2013 omg djfnfjjf,,. i wrote this all on mobile and my neck is killing me, big F
> 
> ...man, this is the 2nd rarepair thats literally just me... LOL
> 
> i also made what is likely the worlds most blatantly, gratuitously inaccurate star chart that i might post along with comedy septentrione stratum roommate outtakes later 👻
> 
> @ the kind person who commented on apeiros and reminded me of all this, this is all thanks to you kdjdhd thank..! u 😂💦
> 
> im on twitter @ geckcellent, feel free to hmu abt desu and stuff and/or lemme know what you think about this insanity if u feel so inclined /o/ hahahhhahah
> 
> ...idek how this came to be, honestly? im still not really a polarisfucker🤔 writing bgm for this fic was sad gundam piano tracks, listen to your heart by edmee, and assorted vocaloid tragedies 😔🙏


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